There is a growing interest in social-ecological restoration. However, conservation research is skewed towards ecological restoration with limited consideration of interlinkages of socio-economic long-term outcomes. Over the past few decades, policy support and intervention efforts to conserve the world's tropical ecosystems, particularly in Tropical Africa where ecosystem degradation is increasingly compromising the lives of wildlife species and human communities, have known a significant increase. However, restoration efforts have been predominantly driven by external funding/development partners in ineffective ways and evaluation of restoration processes and outcomes has resulted in unsustainable outcomes. This situation underlines the importance of innovative research tools that foster the intertwined nature of social and ecological systems towards a long-term improvement of the biosphere as well as human-nature harmony. Addressing the disconnect between science and practice in restoration requires the involvement of other stakeholders beyond the academia circles. This workshop session will highlight state of the art projects in social-ecological research in tropical conservation and restoration as well as provide a methodological framework that can effectively support moving the field forward through an integrated multidisciplinary framework. Various methods and approaches to social ecological systems (SES) research will be presented and discussed through the lens of current national and international contexts and restoration goals across various temporal and geographic scales. The session will focus on economic, institutional, and legal settings that drive the success or failure of multidisciplinary methodological processes of social-ecological research.